Yesterday and last night we discussed the Subaru advertising campaign with NameMedia, the owner of Rockclimbing.com. (You may recall that NameMedia's involvement with the site is to sell and serve ads. All management and operational responsibilities are delegated to sangiro and me, the previous owners of the site).

NameMedia sold the campaign to Subaru without our knowledge or involvement. The campaign started running yesterday, and entails rich media effects across the browser screen. Our position has always been that we strongly oppose any kind of invasive advertising like pop-ups, page take-overs or interstitials, hence we urged NameMedia to remove the ads. They have the final call however and decided to keep the campaign running, tweaking the implementation to ensure that a particular user will not see more than 3 of the ads each day. Further:

- The campaign will end on Oct 17th - There is an “x” box during the rich media extension that allows the user to stop the rich media. - The campaign is targeted for US users only.

You are encouraged to send your feedback about the campaign to NameMedia at advertise@rockclimbing.com.

DDT

Update: NameMedia agreed to further reduce the cap to 1 impression per day, and will not display the ads in our Forum section. More info here.

Yesterday and last night we discussed the Subaru advertising campaign with NameMedia, the owner of Rockclimbing.com. (You may recall that NameMedia's involvement with the site is to sell and serve ads. All management and operational responsibilities are delegated to sangiro and me, the previous owners of the site).

NameMedia sold the campaign to Subaru without our knowledge or involvement. The campaign started running yesterday, and entails rich media effects across the browser screen. Our position has always been that we strongly oppose any kind of invasive advertising like pop-ups, page take-overs or interstitials, hence we urged NameMedia to remove the ads. They have the final call however and decided to keep the campaign running, tweaking the implementation to ensure that a particular user will not see more than 3 of the ads each day. Further:

- The campaign will end on Oct 17th - There is an “x” box during the rich media extension that allows the user to stop the rich media. - The campaign is targeted for US users only.

You are encouraged to send your feedback about the campaign to NameMedia at advertise@rockclimbing.com.

DDT

Rich media effects? Is that what that shit's called? I've already been hit once today, so we'll see how that three times in one day thing works out. If Namemedia and/or Subaru care for add effectiveness feedback, you can feel free to tell them that I will never buy a Subaru solely because of those stupid ass ads. Their ad execs should be fired and beaten with a club for green lighting that campaign.

At the least, could they make sure that the x is visible at all times during this "rich media" event. You know, through vigorous testing? The way the site's laid out, if the top banner on the front page was the subaru ad, you couldn't actually see the x, so you couldn't close it. Nor could you visit anything in the "My Stuff" box.

The frequency cap will be reduced to 1 impression of the ad per user per day. Additionally, the ads will not be displayed in our Forums section.

What this means is that only about 1% of the original campaign will be served. NameMedia told me that they would have turned it off completely was it not for the fact that they are contractually bound to deliver impressions for this campaign.

It's not my place to defend NameMedia in this, however I think it is commendable that they were willing to listen and act on the feedback from the RC.com community, giving up a non-trivial amount of ad revenue in favor of our user experience.

It's not my place to defend NameMedia in this, however I think it is commendable that they were willing to listen and act on the feedback from the RC.com community, giving up a non-trivial amount of ad revenue in favor of our user experience.

I guess I don't view this so optimistically. NameMedia decided to take an obnoxious ad in the first place (and not the first time I've seen complaints of "rich media" ads on here). Users complained, many seem to have turned on adBlock and were making others aware of it. It seems less like a good gesture to enhance user experience than trying to recover before they deliver zero hits because everyone is filtering the ads.

They are just testing the limits of how annoying they can get away with being before everyone is filtering them out. If they cared about user experience, they would have a policy of not taking obnoxious ads (sounds, escaping the banner space, etc) in the first place.

Does NameMedia review ads first? Do advertisers have direct access to throw their handiwork in the ad mix? There have been a number of instances of large ad networks accidentally serving malicious content - what is NameMedia's review process, and what control mechanisms are in place to prevent an advertiser from slipping in malicious content?

I do understand that sites such as these need ads to run, but at some point i am willing to not care if my behavior kills the site in the long term or not.

Banners - not nice, but i can understand that.

but "rich media"? I (and with the current netbook/ nettop trend a growing number) am on a rather slow computer, and for example that screaming BD add simply locked up my whole computer! flash and PPC (or atom) dont go togehter well!

And those overlays? Being from germany i do not get them here, but generally: Who the hell got this idea? The person who invented those probably also thinks kidnapping a girl and holding her hostage is an acceptable first date! It is my principle to not buy anything that got advertised in layer ads.

Our position has always been that we strongly oppose any kind of invasive advertising like pop-ups, page take-overs or interstitials, hence we urged NameMedia to remove the ads. They have the final call however and decided to keep the campaign running...

I am a simple person so forgive me for not understanding...

But why do "They" have the final call about what goes on the site that you own.

"Urged".... True rofl fail funny...

Almost made the add worth it for the funny post you made explaining in very polite terms why you are agreeing to being but fu**ed by an add company.

Because NameMedia owns the servers upon which this website runs. Rockclimbing.com is operated by ddt, but much like any manager, he doesn't own rockclimbing.com anymore than the manager of the local McDonald's owns that store.

Our position has always been that we strongly oppose any kind of invasive advertising like pop-ups, page take-overs or interstitials, hence we urged NameMedia to remove the ads. They have the final call however and decided to keep the campaign running...

I am a simple person so forgive me for not understanding...

But why do "They" have the final call about what goes on the site that you own.

"Urged".... True rofl fail funny...

Almost made the add worth it for the funny post you made explaining in very polite terms why you are agreeing to being but fu**ed by an add company.